


Upon the Classification of Personal Scent Differentials Relative to Area of Subject's Body

by ClearBrightLight



Series: A Series of Sensory Monographs [1]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-15
Updated: 2013-09-15
Packaged: 2017-12-26 15:02:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 638
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/967343
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ClearBrightLight/pseuds/ClearBrightLight
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sherlock loved the way John smelled.<br/>It was personal, and intoxicating, and infinitely variable, and John shared it only with him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Upon the Classification of Personal Scent Differentials Relative to Area of Subject's Body

The human body has a distinct scent. Each human body smells a little different.

Even a familiar body can change its scent from day to day, hour to hour, depending on physical activity, cleaning products, environment, length of time since bathing, consumption of food, and contact with other substances or creatures or people.

Sherlock universally loved the way John smelled. (Well, perhaps not universally: that one time they had both fallen in the Thames, neither one of them had smelled particularly attractive for nigh on a week. But generally, John smelled appealing.)

His basic aroma was comprised of wool and cotton, the faintest hint of leather, no-frills shampoo and simple soap. And tea. John always smelled of tea, as though his pores exuded it. John was steeped in tea.

But it was the underlying scent, his unique odour, an incomparable musk that was the essence of John, defying description and comparison, that Sherlock loved best. It was personal, and intoxicating, and infinitely variable, and John shared it only with him.

Different parts of John smelled different. The backs of his knees smelled sharper and more ferrous than the inside of his elbows; the outside of his wrist was sweeter than the tangy curve of his ear. Sherlock loved the scent of every part of John, but he was honest enough to admit he had his favourites.

The nape of his neck after a shower. Buried deep down under the smell of wet hair and shampoo, it was John's scent at its most clean and pure. If Sherlock could catch him while his hair was still wet, he would rub his face all over the back of John's head, and carry the smell away with him until it faded.

The hollow of his throat in the morning. Concentrated and strong, just a little sour with unwashedness, sweetly sticky and pervasive. It smelled of home and safety and comfort.

The small of his back after sex. When they lay tangled together, sweat cooling between them, John's lower back smelled wild and sated, salty and bitter, a dichotomous mix of himself and Sherlock, intensely intimate.

The back of his forearm after he had been out in the sun. Hot and distilled and mixed with a dizzying hint of ozone, fresh and vibrant and joyous in its unabashed John-ness. It was the scent of bravery, a sort of Eau de Courage.

Sherlock's absolute favourite was the most elusive, and the most faint: the smell of the back of John's hand in the evening, specifically the space between the knuckles of the third and fourth fingers of his left hand. When they sat together after dinner, long after John had washed the powder of latex examination gloves away, after the dishes had been done, when they were just existing together, Sherlock would catch this hand and keep it. If he pressed his lips just so to the bone of the knuckle at the base of John's forefinger, his nose fell perfectly into a hollow that seemed ready-made for it, and as his breath warmed the thin skin there, his favourite aroma might be released.

The smell here was light and sweet, dry and deeply wistful, like the memory of a first kiss. Like the dearest kind of homesickness, Sherlock hungered for it even as it filled his nose. It was agony, and it was bliss. If he shifted even slightly, if he breathed in or out too hard, the scent would change or vanish, leaving him unsatisfied and bereft. He could happily spend days, months, years, decades drowning in this most evasive and deceptive of elixirs.

John let Sherlock keep his left hand as long as he wanted it, and wore his ring on the fourth finger of his right, so the impersonal tang of metal did not interfere with his lover's adorations.


End file.
